Beautiful American National Parks and Train Ride--Oct/Nov 2015Jim and Andrea SiscelSlide Show of Photos with captions at end of trip information

In October and November Andrea and I took a road trip to visit family and friends and view some spectacular American scenery. We were headed for Durango, CO. On the way our first park visit was Arches National Park in southeastern Utah. What beautiful rock formations. If you go here spring and fall is a good time as the crowds are smaller. Plan on a minimum of 3 hours, more if you plan on walking out to the different arches. Continuing on the same day we stopped at Mesa Verde National Park with numerous Ancestral Pueblo people dwellings. It takes over an hour to drive into where the dwellings are located.

The following day we took a full day trip on the Durango & Silverton narrow gauge railroad from Durango to Silverton. A cool trip on a stream engine train with lots of mountain scenery.

Several days later after more visiting we were now in Pharr, TX as FAR as you can go in Texas without crossing the Rio Grande River. We took a day trip to South Padre Island where we saw many brown pelicans.

Some more visiting, two Arizona Fall League baseball games and we arrived at Yosemite National Park. We have been trying to get here for several years. We were a little late to see some of the outlying areas of the park as they close November 1st. But we did see the main valley with a little snow in the valley and more on the surrounding areas.

We drove up the Pacific coastline to Eureka and visited the Humbolt Redwoods State Park. Boy was it a crooked road to get to California Hwy 1. Three more days of visiting and we arrived home after driving 6,322 miles.